Singapore investor ups Vinamilk stake

Hanoi (VNA) - The
Singapore-based automotive group, Jardine Cycle and Carriage (JC&C), has
made additional purchases of Vinamilk’s shares after its maiden 616.6 million USD
investment on November 10.

This has increased its ownership in Vietnam’s
largest dairy producer to 10 percent.

According to the group’s announcement on November
17, Platinum Victory Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JC&C, has made
further on-market purchases to acquire an additional of nearly 16.5 million
shares from Vinamilk, representing approximately 1.1 percent of the issued
share capital of Vinamilk.

Following the acquisition, the JC&C
group now has an aggregate interest in nearly 145.6 million Vinamilk shares,
representing approximately 10.0 percent of Vinamilk’s issued share capital.

On November 10, JC&C beat other bidders
to purchase a 3.33 percent stake in Vinamilk from the State Capital Investment
Corporation (SCIC) at an open auction on the HCM Stock Exchange. It also
acquired another 2.2 percent stake via order-matching transactions to bring its
holding to up to 5.53 percent.

Currently, JC&C is the third-largest
shareholder of Vinamilk, after SCIC with 36 percent and Singapore’s food and
beverages company Fraser&Neave, with 18.74 percent.

JC&C, a subsidiary of Jardine Matheson,
has been present in Vietnam for over a decade. It now owns a 25.1 percent stake
in automobile producer, Thaco, and nearly 23 percent in the Refrigeration
Electrical Engineering Corporation (REE Corp).-VNA